This Week’s Top 5 TV Moments: Bye, Samantha

There are scores of TV shows out there, with dozens of new episodes each week, not to mention everything you can find on Hulu Plus, Netflix streaming, and HBO Go. How’s a viewer to keep up? To help you sort through all that television has to offer, Flavorwire is compiling the five best moments on TV each week. This time, Samantha Bee departs from The Daily Show and Peggy Olson comes clean about her past.

In the run-up to Jon Stewart’s departure, this week The Daily Show said goodbye to its longest-serving correspondent: Samantha Bee. Part of the crew since 2003, Bee is departing to head her own program on TBS. Stewart sent her off with a highlight reel that showed Bee doing what she does best: trolling Republicans, guidos, and other right-wing nutjobs. She concludes with a tearful, in-person goodbye. Bee will be missed — especially since her show doesn’t have a premiere date yet.

Louie Puts On Makeup

This week’s episode of Louie was all about gender-bending: Louie is violently beaten by a woman at a bus stop; Louie is initially too embarrassed to admit to his children that, in Pamela’s words, he got beat up by a girl; and most strikingly, Louie gets made up by Pamela, who then convinces him to have sex in drag… and breaks up with him afterwards. But Louie and Pamela’s relationship has always reversed the traditional gender dynamic of heterosexual relationships — it’s always been Pamela who wants to keep it friendly/casual, and Louie who wants more while pretending he doesn’t in order to keep what they have — making “Bobby’s House” a fitting sendoff.

John Oliver Pranks Fast Fashion

John Oliver has been around long enough that we’ve started to take his eloquent takedowns for granted. Every once in a while, though, a second-season episode reaches Last Week Tonight‘s earliest levels of hype, like this week’s takedown of fast-fashion chains and their refusal to take responsibility for labor abuses by subcontracted manufacturers. Oliver’s speech culminated in a “fashion show” of his very own — of the suspiciously cheap lunches he’d bought for company CEOs on HBO’s dime.

Amy Schumer Grills Ashley Madison

We’ve already praised the best scripted sketch from this week’s episode of Inside Amy Schumer,but her interview with Noel Biderman, CEO of notorious cheating site Ashley Madison, deserves its own shoutout. The segment is gloriously uncomfortable, allowing Biderman to fall on his own, obnoxious sword, and caps off with an appearance by “pregnant as fuck” head writer Jessi Klein — right after Biderman says pregnancy is when men start to cheat. Awk.

Steggy Forever

This week’s episode of Mad Men was arguably the first that felt like part of a final season. “Time & Life” introduces the Big Event that will conclude the series in the form of Sterling Cooper’s absorption into McCann Erickson, and sees Peggy Olson make a heartrending confession to work husband Stan: that she gave up a baby for adoption years ago. Stan, like the platonic ideal of a ’70s dude he is, reacts with compassion, and later agrees to follow Peggy to McCann. It’s rare for a character in Don Draper’s world to develop a healthy relationship with the truth, and even rarer to have the truth received with any kind of warmth. But if anyone deserves that kind of reception, it’s Peggy Olson.